Scooty-Puff Sr is a motorcycle with an unusual feature: it has a trunk. Much like most trunks these days, there's a gas strut to keep the trunk lid open when it's open, which you can see here.
This gas strut does a great job of keeping the trunk lid, which is also the seat, open... well, assuming it has a little extra help.
Luckily, through the miracle of suspiciously cheap Chinese parts sellers, I managed to procure a replacement.
Now it might be theoretically possible to replace this gas strut without removing the seat, but it's pretty tight quarters in there so...
Removing the seat is actually a little bit of a pain in the ass, but probably slightly less of a pain than doing the job with it still in place.
Access to the strut is much easier now.
Step number one of doing this strut swap is, surprisingly, to disassemble the new strut. While the new strut came with perfectly serviceable ball joints, as it turns out the balls on the bike side of things are actually welded in place, so we have to separate the joint by sliding up the retaining clip.
And to remove the old strut, the same operation is performed: sliding up the little retaining clip and pulling the head of the ball joint off of the ball.
Also seen here: the blue shop rag that I stuffed in the opening right below the strut after playing "oh god what circle of hell did that clip disappear into" for about 10 minutes before finally fishing it back out of the bodywork of the bike. Mental note: stuff the blue rag in there first next time.
Anyway, the new strut pops onto the ball joints on top and bottom and the clips clip it into place.
And then the seat goes back on, with a bit of struggling.
And magically it holds itself aloft without any external assistance whatsoever!
Truly a miracle of modern science.
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